A spinning machine normally, has a longitudinally extending row of spinning stations each having a drawing frame or stretcher and a spinner, the latter normally of the ring type. A creel is provided above this machine for holding spools of yarn or roving, typically two spools for each station.
Since such machines operate at high speed, the yarn supplies are used up fairly rapidly, making it a full-time job for someone to refill the empty stations. A sensor is provided at each station to signal when it has run out of yarn or roving, and a brake is provided so that the end of the previous filament is not pulled through the spinner. Thus the operator reloads the empty spool holder and attaches the start of its filament to the end of the preceding one and restarts the station.
It is common to spin together two filaments, and in this case the machines are often loaded with two identical bobbins or spools at the same time. Since the filaments are of the same length, they will run out at the same time, necessitating replacement of both packages. In such a machine the one package is normally behind the other, so that the operator must reach around one holder to get at the other.
Although it has been suggested to automate the reloading of the yarn holders, no system has yet been proposed that was capable of doing so without requiring large-scale redesign of the spinning machine and that could replace the outside and inside packages inside a compact creel.